As the weeks dragged on, and the sniping began, viewership levels undeniably dipped.

The season's penultimate episode averaged just 1.8 million.

With the crime drama's sins—all nine of them—so evident, the downward spiral should have continued.

But it didn't. Because you didn't hate it enough to not care.

Sunday's episode, you see, sucked back in 2.3 million.

So, go ahead, and admit it: You love The Killing.

You love to complain about it.

Other ratings winners from the TV week that was:

• Falling Skies: On a killer Sunday, nothing killed more than TNT's new space-invader series, which beamed up 5.9 million viewers, tops among all scripted cable series.

• The Walking Dead: Up against Falling Skies, AMC's zombie hit held steady with its season-one premiere, with 5.2 million viewers. The show did not premiere. As for why we misread this TVBytheNumbers story, as well as the results from a few followup searches (to "confirm" what we'd misread), and then convinced ourselves the Nielsen rankings had erroneously left out the AMC show, we can only surmise we're the walking dead, too.

• Game of Thrones: Another Sunday show, another Sunday hit. The HBO series closed out its first season with its biggest audience yet: 3 million viewers.

• Drop Dead Diva: So, something had to get shut out on Sunday, right? We suppose, but it wasn't the Lifetime series, which recorded 2.9 million viewers for its season-three premiere, not far off from the 3.1 million for its season-two starter.

• Covert Affairs: The USA spy show was cable's most-watched drama series not airing on Sunday (3.9 million viewers).